We are now at 46 points. Unfortunately for me this is the Max points I said we could reach at the All-Star break. Just goes to show how unpredictable this league can be.
if you don't see how the salary cap and the limit on DP's is exactly this then I don't know what to tell you
Does Seattle hold their fan council vote every year to determine if the GM stays or goes, or is that held every couple of years?
Until the salary cap rises to the point where the smaller clubs can't match it. The NBA has a salary cap, but you don't see the Jazz going to the finals any time soon.
there was a really good podcast by the Total Soccer show with Sam Stekjal (see here) where they talked about the upcoming CBA and how the players left money on the table in the last CBA. Really worth a listen - and then worth finding the Athletic article by Sam talking CBA
true, but the luxury tax in the NBA isn't really the same as it is in MLS. Further, even as a person who knocks the NBA quite a bit, it's been shown that smart GM work can get you a really good team even in a smaller market. The Spurs were dominant. For years the Warriors were garbage but then they figured it out - and it's not like they are in the biggest market even in their own state. But those two leagues are in different settings entirely. MLS has done quite a bit to keep parity and still maintain a model that gets the TV needle moving. It's not perfect, but it's not a disaster, either.
While not directly about RSL it does confirm with data our complaints about RSL substitution patterns. Lack of substitute decreases likelyhood of turning around a score deficit. TLDR if losing better to sub before 58th min for first sub, 73 second sub, and 78 last sub. Also preplanning subs gets better results out of player knowing he will be sub. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/down-at-halftime-in-a-soccer-game-use-your-subs/
I have a question. I've been reading @Knave's magic/tragic number thread in the MLS forum and noticed that RSL has the 2nd best home record in the league (see the 4th table in this most recent update). But we have the 8th worst away record. What gives? This is over 15-16 home and away games for the entire league so it's not likely random chance, so is it possible RSL is a really good team that doesn't have the mental fortitude to play well on the road? Or is RSL really just a mediocre team that is lucky at home and unlucky on the road, and if we played more games this season we'd see the home PPG drop and away PPG rise? If it's the former, and RSL has the components to compete with the best teams in the league, what needs to change to bring that quality of play to the road? Because any improvement in our road play would make a difference in the current standings. If we had Portland's road record, we'd have 53 points and be 2nd in the conference and 4th in the league, instead of 5th and 8th.
I think it's mostly just random noise. Across all 24 teams the correlation between home and away PPG is 0.34, which is small but not nothing: However, drop LAFC (a legit good team at home and away) and CIN (a legit bad team at home and away), and that correlation drops to 0.12: RSL is the dot to the farthest right in that second graph. We are below the trendline, but not really abnormally so. Looking at this graph, the bigger stories are Houston and Chicago (the two lowest dots), who both look likely to miss out on the playoffs despite home PPG of 1.94 and 1.88, respectively. Their away PPG of 0.4 and 0.5 has just killed them both. Or, maybe the biggest story of this graph is that home and away form are not very correlated at all...I'm surprised it is this low. EDIT: I just looked up the same numbers for the Premier League last year. Correlation between home and away PPG was 0.85! Even dropping the best (Man City) and worst teams (Huddersfield), the correlation is still 0.76.
I think our strong home record and bad road record reflect the teams abilities to play in certain settings well and not adapt to others. Which comes back to the coaching staff and the way they gameplan. What is interesting for the PL vs MLS setup is that the PL has the same amount of games home/away vs opponents. Everyone plays everyone twice. No random 3 games against some, 2 against others, and 1 against the rest stuff we deal with in the US. In a lot of ways, you could have a bad road record but be a good team because of how your scheduling was setup. Imagine having to play at LAFC twice, at RSL twice, at ATL, at NYC, at NE, etc. The data this pulls from is not equal in any other way than just being that each team played 17 times at home and 17 times away by the end of the season. This all goes without mentioning how big timing can be for certain home games and road games. Congestion is the obvious one that comes to mind - playing 2 road games in 8 days with a home game mixed in can kill you. Then you add injuries, international duty, etc. You start to really not have much to stand on here in terms of league trends but rather just tell a story of individual teams and how they did or did not manage their schedule.
Also how much does the altitude handicap teams? What's Colorado's home ppg? Are we just a mediocre team with an altitude advantage?
I can only remember a handful of occasions where it felt like we had an altitude advantage. But that's a really hard (if not impossible) thing to measure, even with modern technology.
Huh. That's fascinating. Apparently, the correlation between away PPG and table position is only 0.48. It's 0.72 for home PPG. I would have guessed away PPG would be more predictive. MLS is a weird league.
What stands out to me is our home record against the East this season. We WON every one of them. That has a lot to do with our home rank in the article posted above. There could be something to the combination of traveling all the way from the East Coast and playing at altitude.
#RSL and General Manager Craig Waibel Agree to Part Ways📋 https://t.co/w4EKzRiOvo pic.twitter.com/Hpd0vqgrW1— Real Salt Lake (@realsaltlake) September 28, 2019